


Consigliere of Mine

by quentinknockout



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 00:47:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4284282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quentinknockout/pseuds/quentinknockout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stannis reflects on what he's lost maintaining the Baratheon Empire. A Godfather AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consigliere of Mine

**Author's Note:**

> For my friends! xx

‘They shot Robert on the causeway. He’s dead.’  
Stannis remembered the way Davos had murmured the news. A choked whisper in the library, the clink of the phone receiver still ringing in both their ears. The body was bloody and fresh, abandoned on the road, the car riddled with bullets. And Stannis, from that moment, who’d once sworn against this family business, could see no other path now.   
His father dead, his brother dead, the youngest brother ill-suited. At least, Stannis would have Davos. Clear-eyed, full-hearted Davos, the consigliere, the right hand man, who’d helped the family out in a time of great need, who’d advised and shielded and reflected the good to Stannis when there was nothing but blackness. Davos, who had kept strong and faithful when the Baratheon crime family had spread an axis of power across the five boroughs like poison ivy. And it had certainly not been done bloodlessly.   
Steffon Baratheon had believed in the country, from the minute he’d seen a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty through the grimy window, shuffling through Ellis Island in a great herd of cattle. He had built a business from the ground up, found influence as a good and reliable entrepreneur. There was money paid under the table every which way, and as they grew older, the sons discovered that friends of their father were not merely friends, but heavies and enforcers. Steffon Baratheon left his sons a fortune and enough to raise them well. But the power had to be kept at all costs.   
‘This ends now,’ Stannis had murmured, thinking of Robert lying dead in the street, and Davos, whom Robert had considered like a brother, realer than some of his own, had nodded his head, eyes half-full of tears but also trepidation. It was too much. The war and uncertainty had razed the city. There could be no more going to the mattresses, no more retributions.   
But Stannis had always known that Davos didn’t want this for him. Not him. Stannis was the good boy, the one who’d turned up at Robert’s wedding in his uniform with a pretty girl named Selyse on his arm. And Stannis remembered that day at the wedding. Good and kind and sweet Davos, who everyone loved and trusted, who was a part of the family. Davos, who was burningly handsome in his tuxedo, who had murmured, very softly, to Stannis to meet him in the upstairs bathroom in ten minutes. And in that upstairs bathroom he’d hissed into Stannis’s neck how much he’d missed him while he was away, while he rocked inside him, up and down against the locked door, and Stannis bit his tongue half bloody to keep from crying out. It was a wonder nobody noticed, it was wildly reckless, but the groom was outside breaking the cameras of nosy photographers, creating a diversion. Nobody had ever noticed them in that way. 

But it all corrupted, after Robert died. Perhaps it was already well on its way before he was cold in his grave. It was a long, slow walk into the darkness, a deep descent, for the Baratheons to maintain that power, to preserve that stranglehold of intimidation. Renly was sent away to Vegas, where he wouldn’t make trouble. And those long, dusky nights began. In the easy chairs with Chinese takeout and their caporegimes, when Stannis would dictate the decisions, the hits, the force to be taken, and Davos would relay them, and each decision seemed to be stinging Davos a little more. Is that necessary? We’ve made our point. And at the end of those long nights, when it was hitting 4am and the younger boys would go home, boldened and burdened with pistols tucked in their belts, Stannis would reach for Davos like usual, grasping at his collar, hungry for him too.   
And the more the Baratheon name was feared, the more Davos wouldn’t look Stannis in the eye, the more he turned away, and Stannis thought that maybe, a few days after that fiery baptism, that it was real fear that Davos was hiding. It was fear that drove Selyse away too, now only allowed to visit Shireen when Stannis was prewarned and far away. ‘It was an abortion, Stannis. Just like our marriage is an abortion. Something that’s unholy and evil.’ 

And then there came a day, long before they found Renly shot dead in that tin boat in the lake, when Davos himself would no longer touch Stannis. He would turn away when he entered a room, take his orders without a word of kindness or consideration. That was when Stannis realised how irredeemable it was, when this beautiful, good and kind man that had had loved for twenty years could barely even look at him. 

And that was always when Stannis would close the door, because, if truth be told, alone at night, he could barely even look at himself.


End file.
